


a glimpse

by Waywarder



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Fluff, Inspired by Poetry, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), inspired by walt whitman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:35:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25186507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waywarder/pseuds/Waywarder
Summary: Just a little glimpse into a hot afternoon in the South Downs."A Glimpse" by Walt Whitman. Thanks, Uncle Walt.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 38





	a glimpse

**Author's Note:**

> I was just craving a little ficlet fun this afternoon. Thank you for reading!

_a glimpse._

(Because there’s something to be said for even the American poets, after all, my dears.)

_a glimpse through an interstice caught,_

It is a sweltering afternoon in the South Downs. Crowley works in his garden anyway, making his way carefully between the rows; he is accustomed to infernos. Soft dirt cakes beneath his black fingernails and sweat cascades down his long, fine neck. The straps of his coveralls slip from his damp shoulders and he blinks wet salt away from his uncovered yellow eyes. 

He does not wreck things now. He has no need. He cultivates, he nourishes. He is freed by a lake-blue softness which he still worries about deserving. 

He looks up at the vast sky and breathes deeply of the blue and the white and the sun-yellow. 

He breathes now. He breathes and he smiles, feeling something like peace amidst the worries and the dirt. 

He returns to his work. He is bringing Aziraphale hydrangeas for his study. 

_of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremark’d seated in a corner,_

It is not a winter night, but a summer afternoon now, and Aziraphale sits inside, plying himself with poetry. The words steal under his skin, far far beneath the golden waistcoat and beneath the sky-blue shirt. Aziraphale is still becoming acquainted with the heat. He usually stays inside when the sun is at its highest point, reading and waiting.

He is accustomed to waiting, after all. He is accustomed to an oppressive sort of patience. He is old bedfellows with a misplaced sense of carefulness, of fear. 

He sips on tea too hot for the weather. He relishes the boil down in his belly, mingling there with the warmth of the words on the page and in his heart. Words he has now been free to speak, to hear. Words carved along his breastbone, marking him forevermore:

“Aziraphale. From Beginning to Eternity. Loved by Crowley.” 

He shudders, closing the book and setting it back down on his desk. He stirs, longing for more heat.

He does not have to wait anymore. He is brave now. 

_of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,_

Aziraphale slips naked out into the garden. He is already sweating, impossibly hot under his absent collar for words and for syntaxes and (always) for a head full of brilliant crimson hair. He  
does not announce himself as he approaches Crowley, down on his knees and digging diligently. He makes his presence known with a soft hand petted along a tangled bun of red hair. Crowley sighs, happy, unsurprised entirely.

Who else could it be?

Aziraphale snaps once to divest Crowley of his clothing and then brings their hands together. 

_a long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest,_

And it is indeed a long while of coming and not so much of going. (Forgive me.) They drink deeply of one another. There are oaths and there are smutty jests, as the best of these times always contain some bits of both.

_there we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word._

Breathless (always), they lie together, intertwined and held aloft by the Earth they have chosen.

Perhaps (always) they will lie there until the stars announce themselves overhead. Crowley will wordlessly point up to his own creations, fashioned long ago with inspiration taken from the precise starlight shade of Aziraphale’s hair. 

Aziraphale will nod against Crowley’s chest, tracing his own constellations through damp red chest hair.


End file.
